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doi:10.1093/occmed/kqu033

B. H.  Pentney, Appointed Factory Doctor, Camberwell and Lambeth Given at a meeting of the Association on 3 April 1964 I am an Appointed Factory Doctor, but it was as a general practitioner that I  received a Nuffield Travelling Fellowship for 1963. I  had chosen to study the type and range of general practice and the place of the general practitioner in industry. I  was also to consider what part the general practitioner could play in a future occupational health service in this country. The tour was started in July 1963 and most of the time was spent in two places—5 weeks in California and 11 weeks in Cincinnati. In North America there is a large and growing body of whole-time industrial physicians, and these are of a high order of knowledge and efficiency. They are the experts. For the greater part they are whole time employees of big industrial organizations. They are responsible for the running of their medical services and research, and set the standard of occupational health throughout the country. A very comprehensive Workmen’s Compensation system is really the basis of the greater part of the work of the general practitioner in industrial medicine, and it is at first sight of immense value in the creation of occupational health systems generally. Unfortunately, during its development the emphasis seems to have altered. The ideals, including fair reimbursement for suffering and loss of earnings, and early rehabilitation, have sometimes been submerged in the processes of preparing a case for presentation to the Accident Commission. The disability will be assessed most carefully—possibly using the standard Packard Thurber system—to achieve some uniformity. Compensation will be awarded strictly in accordance with a standard scale, taking into consideration the patient’s age, the exact anatomical site of the lesion, the percentage of

loss of movement and expectancy in that man’s specific trade. With these tremendously detailed assessments, time is lost and it seemed to me that early and adequate rehabilitation was impeded. I was surprised at the wide range of disabilities accepted as industrial in origin and shocked at the amount of compensation awarded—for example, for bronchitis and coronary disease. Undoubtedly the general practitioner has an established place in occupational health in the United States. It is, however, fairly limited in its application. Individual and group practitioners provide good casualty and routine examination services for large and small industries. Although to us it is clearly desirable that all factories should have medical services, occupational health has not yet been completely sold to industry. There industrial medical practitioners dealing mainly with Workmen’s Compensation cases have not established free access into plants, and they appear to have little enthusiasm for, or encouragement to be interested in, sick factories. Though splendid and growing centres for environmental studies are available there is much left to be achieved in terms of getting the proprietor or management to want medical services. Post-graduate training in the speciality is available, but on the whole poorly attended, and it would seem that though this must be made more attractive, the subject of occupational health ought to be a mandatory undergraduate subject. From: General practice and industrial medicine in the United States. Trans Ass Industr Med Offrs (1964) 14, 89. Available at: Occup Med (Lond) 1964;14:89–90. doi:10.1093/occmed/14.1.89. The full Occupational Medicine archive can be accessed online at http://occmed.oxfordjournals.org/.

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Fifty years ago: ‘General practice and industrial medicine in the United States’

Fifty years ago: 'General practice and industrial medicine in the United States'. 1964.

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